I was born and raised in New York City by a single mother, attended LaGuardia High School, the institution formerly known as the High School of Performing Arts. (Yes, the "Fame" school. No, we did not dance on tables.) After graduating from the Drama department, I decided that I did not want to spend four more years with actors and went to Clark University, where I started my own theater company. After college, I ran a theater PR agency for many years; some of my clients were Criss Angel (pre-TV and Vegas fame), the Classical Theatre of Harlem (who I helped make famous), Alan Cumming (who didn't need my help), and Dr. Laura Schlessinger's one-woman show (long story). Because I married a wonderful woman with a good job, I was able to close my business after the birth of our second child to become a writer and full-time dad. Current writing credits include the pop culture site Snakkle.com, The Onion AV Club, GrandParents.com and DaddyTips.com. Past credits include AOL ParentDish, Time Out New York Kids, and the Boston Phoenix. I have appeared as a talking head on CNN, ABC News Now and the Fox News Channel, and do a semi-regular podcast on BlogTalkRadio. I've also taught college classes at Yale University (guest lecturer), LaGuardia Community College and my alma matter Clark University. I also play guitar and nap whenever possible. Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/brettsinger.

Is What's Good For Bob Pittman Good For Meg Whitman? CEO Annoucements Compared

CEO Announcements are frequent. But is this news is covered differently depending on whether the new CEO is male or female?

Let’s compare two recent announcements: Meg Whitman and Bob Pittman.

I want to point out that this should in no way be seen as a business analysis of any of the companies mentioned. My experience with eBay is limited to buying and selling a few things (I do have an excellent rating, which I am quite proud of). As for ClearChannel, I prefer to listen to satellite radio via SiriusXM, mostly because of Howard Stern. (OK, entirely because of Howard Stern. But the other stations are good too.)

I was struck by what I felt was a largely negative media reaction to the Whitman announcement, and the largely positive notices Pittman received. Also, although this is a blog post and not a scientific study, I will try to be somewhat fair and compare coverage from the same news outlet, The New York Times.

Right before Whitman was announced as the new head of HP, the Times ran an article that begins with the following: As speculation swirled Wednesday that Meg Whitman might be brought in to save the troubled Hewlett-Packard, the tech world rendered a verdict: You have got to be kidding.

Guess you can only go up from there, right?

For some deeper analysis, let’s look at an article published the following day. The author opens by wondering “what kind of leader [Whitman] will be.” The writer lauds her for growing eBay “from a 30-employee minnow of a company to a 15,000-employee whale with $8 billion in annual revenue.” Yeah, that sounds like she did a nice job.

It then goes on to praise Whitman for her acquisition of PayPal, and bash her for buying Skype, claiming that a subsequent sale to a private investor group has “the ignominy of what Silicon Valley denizens called one of the worst deals of all time.”

Now let’s look at this Times article about Robert Pittman being named the new CEO of ClearChannel.

Pittman has a long career in the media business, including being a major player in the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger. Here is what the Times piece says about his role in that deal: [Pittman] became the chief operating officer of the newly merged AOL Time Warner in 2001, but left the next year.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

I think you are ignoring some very relevant external factors here. It is more likely that they received different coverage because HP was coming off a well-publicized and disastrous CEO selection, and decided to replace a failed CEO (who had relevant experience in some parts of HP’s business) that wasn’t vetted by the board with a board-member CEO that has no relevant experience in any part of HP’s business, via a no-search process. Since no real defense was given as to why she is a good candidate to lead HP, you are left with a high level summary of: she led eBay from startup to boom, personally championed a large and failed acquisition, was replaced by someone who put the company back on a growth path, and then she lost the governor’s race.

On the other hand, Clear Channel was run by the founding family until Pittman was brought in, there wasn’t a lot of CEO turmoil as far as I can see, and he has a long background in media and entertainment. He wasn’t CEO of AOL or TimeWarner when the deal was done, so it’s not equivalent to Whitman’s role with Skype. If you had done any digging with actual eBay employees, you would have learned that Skype didn’t go through the normal acquisition vetting process at eBay, but was driven through by Whitman in a way that other deals were not.

Thanks for the comments, and good points all. Like I said, this post wasn’t meant to be an analysis of the merits of either CEO’s abilities. That said, I found it odd to not mention Pittman’s AOL Time Warner experiences beyond “he was there and then he wasn’t”. For example, this article from 2002 refers to him as “embattled”: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-944761.html Admittedly, he was COO, not CEO. Again, thanks for the thoughtful comment.

I think the author of this is missing another variable besides the male female difference. Meg Whitman recently ran as a conservative in the California Gubernatorial election. The New Yorks Times is well known to lean way left and smears any conservative woman. How did they write about Palin, Bachman? DO you think if they wrote a “non-political” piece about a business Palin was running they would give her a fair shot?